1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to caps used for being worn on the head to protect the head from strong sunlight and, more particularly, to a cap with a hinged ultraviolet ray visor, said visor being made of an anti-ultraviolet material and being hinged to a head band, thus allowing a user to easily change the angular position of the visor relative to the head band when necessary.
2. Description of the Prior Art
While participating in an outdoor sport, such as cycling or jogging, or viewing an outdoor game, such as football or baseball, under strong sunlight, the eyes may be exceedingly stimulated by strong light from the sun, thus momentarily losing sight. This inhibits participants or spectators from achieving clear, visual perception. Particularly, when the head is directly exposed to strong light from the sun for a lengthy period of time, facial skin may be seriously damaged and suffer from undesired pigmentation, freckles, sunburn and/or skin cancers. In recent years, the ozonosphere has been deteriorated at several areas due to serious air pollution and this results in a remarkable increase in the amount of ultraviolet rays radiated onto the ground along with sunlight. Skin maladies, such as skin cancers caused by the ultraviolet rays, thus become worse.
It is necessary for people to protect the eyes and skin from ultraviolet ray-laden strong light from the sun. This may be accomplished by caps and/or sunglasses. Such caps typically have a visor or a projecting front brim designed to protect the face from strong sunlight, while sunglasses are designed to protect the eyes. In addition, several types of anti-ultraviolet skin creams capable of protecting the skin from ultraviolet rays have been proposed and widely used. Such a skin cream is directly applied on the skin.
However, known anti-ultraviolet skin creams are problematic in that they may undesirably cause a skin malady or a allergic reaction to chemicals or the ingredients of the creams. Another problem of the above skin creams resides in that they may cause water pollution in swimming pools, and so use of the skin creams is thus restricted in such places. This is inconvenient to users of such skin creams.
In comparison with the anti-ultraviolet skin creams, caps and sunglasses are more convenient to users since they are more easily and conveniently used outdoors without being restricted by location or place of use. However, known sunglasses are only designed to protect the eyes from reflected strong sunlight, but are lacking any means for protecting the face from ultraviolet rays.
On the other hand, known caps are problematic in that the visors are fixed to the front portion of the head band, thus failing to effectively protect the face from strong light from the sun since the radiation angle of the sunlight is continuously variable. When a cap of the known variety is worn on the head of a user while participating in a speedy sport, such as cycling or roller blading, the visor of the cap may be resisted by a high wind, thus unexpectedly removing the cap from the head. The known caps, with such fixed visors, thus reduce activity of the user while participating in such a speedy sport. This forces the user to reset the position of the cap on the head from a front visor position to a rear visor position prior to being involved in the sport. However, the caps in such a rear visor position regrettably fail to protect the face from strong sunlight laden with ultraviolet rays.